IWSG: Wednesday, June 6, 2018 ~ Chasing the Click

It's the first Wednesday of the month:
the day when members of the
Insecure Writer's Support Group
share their writing struggles
and writing successes
and offer their encouragement
and support to fellow writers.





To visit the IWSG website, click here.

To become a member of the IWSG, click here.

Our wonderful co-hosts who are volunteering today,
along with IWSG founder Alex Cavanaugh are:
Beverly Stowe McClure,  Tyrean Martinson, and Ellen@The Cynical Sailor,  

I hope you have a chance to visit today's hosts and thank them for co-hosting.
I'm sure they would appreciate a visit and an encouraging comment.

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Every month the IWSG poses a question
that members can answer with advice, insight,
a personal experience, or a story in their IWSG posts.

Or, the question can inspire members
if they aren't sure what to write about on IWSG Day.

Remember the question is optional.
This month's featured question is:

What's harder for you to come up with, book titles or character names?


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Typically I have written nonfiction, so naming characters has not been an issue for me.
However titles have had me guzzling coffee
and chomping on crystalized ginger and chocolate long into the night
as I write a piece and search for the right title.

The odd time I have written fiction, naming my characters
has proven easier than searching for the title.

Whenever I think about writing character names and titles,
I think about one of my favorite novels that I read in 1962:
Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.






Wikipedia



The movie was coming to Sioux Lookout's one theatre screen,
and my mother suggested that I read the book
before she and I went to see the movie ~
a challenging undertaking for a twelve-year-old girl.

I have never forgotten the engrossing story
of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era,
set in Georgia, a time and location unfamiliar to me
as a young Canadian in northern Canada.

But it wasn't the war and reconstruction that captivated me;
it was the unforgettable characters and what they endured to survive
as their world and way of life was destroyed.
And of course, Scarlett, Ashley, and Rhett.

It is often said that "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
But I'm not so sure.

Pansy O'Hara just doesn't fit the passionate, willful, 
and unconventional Scarlett of Gone with the Wind.

Definitely Not a Pansy!

Wikimedia

And "Tomorrow is Another Day" as the title?
I wonder if the novel would have done as well with such a milquetoast title.

Is it any wonder that writers sometimes struggle
to find the perfect character name and title?

I don't have a method for writing either.
I play around with words and names until something clicks,
like messing with fossils fragments on a lab table
as you search to find pieces that fit together,
and suddenly there is that gratifying click,
not a sound but a feeling, in the meshing of two fragments, 
when you've found a match.

On a completely different topic,
have you read
the 2018 IWSG Anthology
Tick Tock:  A Stitch in Crime?






IWSG






I found it great fun to read from two perspectives.
First, it's a delight to read the works of fellow IWSG members 
I know and to discover new IWSG authors whom I haven't read before,
and second, it's intriguing to see eleven writers
create such different mysteries with a common thread of time.
I'll be rereading the anthology more than once.

Happy writing in June!

Spring Clouds
Always Gone with the Wind 

Aurora, Colorado, USA

May 23, 2018

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved